CocowonBest Feature-Length Animated Film at this year’s Oscars, an award Pixar has won so many times that people sometimes refer to it as The Pixar Award. Did Coco deserve this award? Or have voters just become accustomed to voting for whatever Pixar movie came out that year?
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Smurfs: The Lost Village is the third theatrical release in the franchise, but it is a reboot dropping the live action elements the first two films had. Unfortunately, it had the worst box office performance in the franchise and even though it did better internationally, there likely won’t be another film in the franchise for quite a while. Is this unfortunate news? Did the franchise finally find its footing? Or was it clear it was never going to get better?
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Aladdin first hit theaters in 1992 and was a smash hit with critics and with moviegoers. Because it is so well-known, I don't think I need to concentrate too much on the plot or the quality of the movie. What is more important is the technical presentation and any additionally extras new to this release. Does the Blu-ray shine in that regard?
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In 1989, The Little Mermaid ended Disney's slump at the box office. However, the good times didn't last forever. In fact, a decade later when Hercules came out, there were signs the studio was slipping back into a slump. Hercules missed expectations at the box office, but does that mean it was a bad movie? And is the Blu-ray worth picking up?
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It is too soon to tell how May will end, as this story will be published before the weekend estimates came out. (Maleficent had an excellent start on Friday, unlike A Million Ways to Die in the West.) Overall, it was a good month with at least three movies that are on track to hit $200 million, but there was no really big winner for the month. It was nice and balanced. Unfortunately, last May there was a monster hit, Iron Man 3, and 2014 could not compete with that, so it lost ground to 2013. June hopes to turn things around and there are some reasons to be optimistic. All four weeks there is at least one film opening that at least has a shot at $100 million. There are even two films that at least have a shot at $300 million. Transformers: Age of Extinction should win the monthly box office race while How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a long shot to win, but I wouldn't be completely surprised if it did. Additionally, 22 Jump Street, Edge of Tomorrow, The Fault in Our Stars, and Think Like a Man 2 are all contenders for the century club. Not all of them will get to that milestone, but all of them at least have a short. Last June, there were three films that reached $200 million, including Man of Steel, which nearly reached $300 million. It looks like June of 2014 will be about as strong as June of 2013, more or less. If all films reach their potential, it could win the year-over-year comparison. Unless there are some shocking bombs, it shouldn't struggle so much that 2014 loses its lead over 2013 entirely.

Over the past two or so years, we've been working on one of the biggest projects we've ever undertaken: building out our database of acting and technical credits to include complete information on every acting role and significant technical credit for movies for which we have box office information. While work on this vast task continues (and will, of course, continue as long as films are being made), we have enough coverage of the industry now to start doing some serious analysis. Over the next month or two, I'll be looking at some of the things we've found and we'll be rolling out new features at The Numbers that take advantage of the dataset. This week, I'll look into how we are categorizing acting roles, and discuss the first charts in our new People Records section.
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Hayao Miyazaki is one of the best animators working today, if not they best. He's created a number of masterpieces and even his weaker efforts are worth watching again and again. Recently two of his films were released on Blu-ray, Howl's Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro. The screeners arrived a little late, but I finally got to the reviews this week. Where do they fit in Hayao Miyazaki's filmography? And are they worth picking up?
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Tim Burton is one of the most stylish directors around and while admittedly he sometimes lets the style get ahead of the story, he has still made many, many wonderful movies over the years. His latest is also one of his first. Way back in 1984, he made a short film called Frankenweenie. Last year, he remade the short as a feature-length stop-motion animated film, Frankenweenie. The film struggled to find an audience, but was that because it didn't deserve an audience? Or has Tim Burton burned up too much of the good-will he generated earlier in his career.
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